U.S. Intelligence confirms dozens of American-funded biolabs in Ukraine, Director of National Intelligence Gabbard releases classified documents
by Timothy Page
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released a tranche of previously classified intelligence documents revealing that the United States government funded and helped construct more than 40 biological laboratories in Ukraine alone — part of a broader network of over 120 U.S.-funded biolabs spanning more than 30 countries. The release, approved by DNI Tulsi Gabbard on April 23, 2026, marks one of the most significant disclosures regarding American biodefense activities abroad and follows what Gabbard described as a deliberate effort by prior administrations to conceal the program from the public.
The declassified slides, produced by the ODNI, show that the Ukrainian labs were built and supported under the Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program — a Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) initiative originally designed to secure and eliminate Soviet-era biological weapons materials after the Cold War. The documents confirm that these facilities housed dangerous pathogens including anthrax, tularemia, tuberculosis, Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, MERS, SARS, and plague, among others. Scientists at the labs were trained by U.S. personnel to work in biocontainment and received an “Especially Dangerous Pathogen (EDP) Certification.” Several facilities also stored Soviet-era biological warfare materials.
According to the documents, construction and equipment contracts were awarded primarily to U.S. integrating contractor Black & Veatch, which worked alongside Ukrainian subcontractors at sites across the country, from Kherson and Odessa to Zakarpatska and Kyiv. Individual lab budgets ranged from roughly $1.7 million to more than $3.4 million in U.S. government investment. One facility — the Central Reference Laboratory at the Ukrainian Research Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa — cost $3,492,551 in total, with the Department of Defense listed as the donor and Ukraine’s Ministry of Health as the beneficiary.
The slides also reveal that the U.S. paid Ukrainian scientists to study the genomes of highly pathogenic avian influenza and other dangerous infectious agents inside these biocontainment facilities, which were themselves funded by the American government. A network diagram included in the release shows a web of collaborating institutions spanning the USDA, CDC, World Health Organization, University of Tennessee, University of Alaska Anchorage, Kansas State University, and private firms including Metabiota — among many others.
One of the most sensitive documents released concerns the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine (IECVM) in Kharkiv, which the intelligence community assessed as housing dangerous pathogens and as being vulnerable to Russian seizure, damage, or long-standing information operations. The document, which carries the ODNI’s declassification stamp, notes that IECVM may have directly or indirectly supported Soviet biological warfare efforts and had documented biosafety and biosecurity deficiencies as recently as 2019, particularly in rooms handling contagious Brucella bacteria. It further notes that following Russia’s invasion, laboratories were reportedly ordered to destroy their pathogen holdings — and that the intelligence community was working to verify what happened at IECVM. Russia, for its part, accused the U.S. of conducting biological weapons work in a basement laboratory at the facility — a claim the document treats as Russian disinformation, while acknowledging that the building does contain a basement level.
Announcing the release, Gabbard stated that evidence of these labs had been “knowingly withheld” from the American public by previous officials, including figures in the Biden administration’s national security team and former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. She alleged that those officials had “lied repeatedly” about the existence of U.S.-funded biolabs overseas and had accused those raising the issue of being “foreign assets and traitors.” Gabbard said ODNI has now issued new guidance directing the intelligence community to increase collection on overseas biological facilities, and that new information is already surfacing regarding clinical trials at some labs that raise “significant ethical, financial, and security concerns.”
The release comes in the wake of an executive order signed by President Trump on May 25, 2025, ending federal funding for gain-of-function research globally — research that modifies pathogens to study how they might become more transmissible or lethal. Gabbard cited that order as evidence that the administration takes seriously the threats posed by dangerous pathogen research, and said ODNI will continue working across the government to identify where labs are located and what agents they contain.
The documents do not allege that any of the Ukrainian labs were conducting offensive biological weapons research on behalf of the United States, and much of the underlying intelligence — including specific assessments about pathogen inventories and research activities — remains redacted. What the release does confirm is the scale, funding, and scope of an American biodefense infrastructure abroad that, until now, had never been formally acknowledged to the public in this form.
The post America’s secret biolabs revealed first appeared on Vermont Daily Chronicle.
The post America’s secret biolabs revealed appeared first on Vermont Daily Chronicle.
